Beware of Spoilers! If you’re not caught up on Peacemaker Season 2, don’t read any further. Go watch the show on HBO Max and then come back. We’ll still be here.
When last we saw Peacemaker, he had abandoned his home dimension and retreated to the “Best Dimension Ever,” with Judomaster in hot pursuit. He left his dimensional portal to the 11th Street Kids, expecting them to return it to ARGUS to get back in the agency’s good graces. Instead, Harcourt rallied the troops, so to speak, and they set off for an adventure into the alternate dimension to “get Chris back.”
“Ignorance is Chris” opens with Peacemaker taking a victory lap at a diner with the Top Trio, Harcourt 2 on his arm. They take a selfie with some children. As the credits begin, the photograph smears their faces into a twisted mess, hinting that things are about to go wrong.
Meanwhile, in the DCU, the 11th Street Kids go to Vigilante’s house. I don’t know how I feel about Adrian referring to his mom as a “tick on his di*k,” but I was kinda hoping Vig would be a straight-up mama’s boy rather than sassy and immature. However, he makes up for it when he shows off his “superhero lair,” a veritable stockpile of drugs and money worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. He even invokes Lethal Weapon’s Roger Murtaugh when he dismisses his fortune as “blood money,” which I saw as a nod.
Anyway, the Kids set up the portal, in the process dusting them all with cocaine and, after a brief “hello” to the weird, rat-disposing alien (Prediction: I bet the rat-disposing alien will somehow save someone’s life in the finale), they go to the Best Dimension Ever.
Elsewhere, Rick Flag is in a bit of a tailspin. After a brief scene with Fleury, whose appearance in this episode is little more than a cameo, Flag has an “in case of emergency, break glass” moment and decides to head off to Belle Reve prison to seek the help of none other than Lex Luthor, with Nicholas Hoult reprising his role from Superman. They make a deal for Lex to help find Peacemaker in the alternate dimension in exchange for a transfer to a white-collar prison. I wonder if that’s all Flag promised to Rick…
I must admit, though, I’m a bit confused. Maybe I missed something, but ARGUS was able to detect the dimensional rift in Peacemaker’s house, not to mention the one in Metropolis, as seen in Superman. Now they can’t find the one in Vigilante’s house? Maybe they need to already know where it is in order to properly detect it, or something like that. t’s not a dealbreaker for me, but I do need a bit more clarity… I’m sure it will come with next week’s episode, though, so I’m not worried.
Thanks to a cocaine-sniffing dog, Harcourt gets detained at ARGUS, where she’s able to have a heart-to-heart with Chris. She explains herself, he explains himself, they both have tears in their eyes, and Chris even declares his love for Harcourt. It’s not so simple for her, but they try to talk through her complicated feelings… But they don’t quite have a full moment of emotional catharsis, since the guard shows up and says Harcourt is free to go. I think she loves him too, but she can’t bring herself to actually say it. She hasn’t had the emotional arc that Peacemaker went through over the course of Season 1. She’s just had it bottled up inside of herself this whole time. She can’t jump the line. She needs to ‘go through it’ before she can meet Peacemaker where he’s at in his own story.
The episode ends with a cliffhanger on every front. Vigilante finds his alternate self and is overjoyed that they’re alike in every way except one: Vigilante-2 is Peacemaker’s arch-enemy and fights alongside the Sons of Liberty (the terrorists Peacemaker fought in an earlier visit to the Best Dimension Ever). Economos, staying at Peacemaker’s family estate, gets captured and stabbed through the hand by the Blue Dragon and reveals to him that Peacemaker is from the DCU, not this alternate dimension. At ARGUS, Peacemaker and Harcourt are confronted by Harcourt-2 just in time to spot an American flag… Only to realize that it’s not an American flag. It’s a Nazi-America flag. The “Best Dimension Ever” is Earth-X, a Nazi realm. Adebayo finds out the hard way. She goes out for a walk and winds up being chased through the streets of this supposedly-idyllic suburbia by the locals, including Keith, Peacemaker’s brother, who shouts, “One got out! A Black!”
Uh oh.
Zak’s Notes (I’m Zak)
Alright, I’m man enough to admit when I was wrong, but I’m not mad about it. The Earth-X revelation felt like a red herring to me at first, but by the end of this episode, it was inevitable. The only way the 11th Street Kids are getting home is by shooting their way out, perhaps with some unexpected help from ARGUS and Judomaster. The Sons of Liberty are apparently freedom fighters raging against the Nazi regime, and I anticipate we’ll see The 11th Street Kids team up with them next week while trying to get back home.
So, my prospective gripe with Earth-X was that I worried about Peacemaker’s decision to return home being much easier if the alternative is a Nazi hellhole. However, I didn’t anticipate the shame and embarrassment he feels at not realizing that his version of “paradise” is a Nazi regime. Peacemaker has been in and out of Earth-X multiple times and not suspected a thing. Harcourt was there for a few hours before she sensed something was up with the lack of people of color. Peacemaker isn’t a white supremacist, but his father was, and he was raised to be one, so he has a bit of a blind spot in that way. Let’s hope his ignorance doesn’t cost Adebayo too dearly. John Cena’s acting in that final scene is subtle and breathtaking in its efficiency, and testament to Cena’s status as one of the great actors of our generation. It could have been a funny little “my bad” kind of moment, but it’s genuinely tragic, even if it comes and goes in just a few seconds. It looks like he’ll have to kill his brother and father all over again, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out, especially since, this time, he won’t be alone.
Vigilante is such an MVP, I love him even when he denies having cried like a heartbroken baby in the previous episode. And this is the first time all season where he’s suited up. He doesn’t have any action beats (except jumping into the bushes in a comic display), but I think it’s just setting the stage for an inevitable rampage next week. Wait, John Lennon isn’t in The Beatles? I suppose Earth-X and John Lennon wouldn’t be compatible with one another. I didn’t see the Lex Luthor cameo coming AT ALL. Right up until the reveal of his face, my mind was racing. But, in hindsight, it feels so obvious and natural. I don’t know if we’ll see Lex again before the end of the season, but the status quo is in a strange and compelling place. Lex Luthor is now working with the US government. Or, given Luthor’s mile-a-minute scheming mind, he has ARGUS eating out of his hand. My hype for Supergirl and Man of Tomorrow rises higher and higher.